Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats Shortening .375 Ruger case for 350's

Can anyone tell me how much does the .375 Ruger case need to be shortened (with the shoulder moved back as well) so as to grip the 350 grain Woodleigh Protected Points (if they become available again) or the 350 Northfork SS in the cannelure when housed in a Ruger Hawkeye action such as the African? I'm only interested in running the 350's. I'm thinking 0.15" might do it. Thank you.

If you use the 33 Nosler case with the neck opened up to .375" you won't have to do extreme case forming, once neck is opened up (or fireformed in new chamber) the overall case length will be shortened somewhat by the larger diameter case mouth, which will put you really close to your target oal case length...

375 Ruger case length 2.580"
33 Nosler case length 2.460"

33 Nosler shorter by .120" right off, open up neck and you will be .130" and then you can trim to desired length for new chamber without having to push shoulder down ... no special case forming dies needed nor custom reloading dies, just get bushing dies in 33 Nosler and .375 cal bushings for proper neck tension and you're loading & shooting STAT

capacity is + or - a grain or two between the Ruger & Nos, in favor of the Nosler case, shorten the Ruger case and you lose up to 10 gr capacity or more

the Nosler case is a thing of beauty, shorter and fatter with same rim diameter, in the event of SHTF, emergency brass requirements can be met by forming the Nosler case from 300 RUM, 338 RUM, 7mm RUM, 375 RUM, 338 EDGE and all the Nosler cases, 26 Nosler,27 Nosler, 28 Nosler, 30 Nosler & of course the 33 Nosler, also they have the 37 Nosler coming soon which will simplify everything for ya

The last two years haven't been that great in brass availability for the 375 Ruger & 300 PRC, the only stuff you can use for what you're trying to do, & only with extensive case forming of course, not a big deal if you have case forming dies already but if not .... then it's added expense and waiting time for that & custom reloading dies

Thanks Swamplord. I have 200 .300 RUM cases that I'm trying to work out what to do with, so I'll look into the necked up 33 Nosler. Just wondering whether a F/L die would push the shoulder back on the .300 RUM case without getting special forming dies. Velocity loss isn't much of an issue because I want 2300 fps in a 22" barrel (no less, no more) using H4350 with the 350's. The other thing is I want 4 in the mag so I'll have to look into getting a canoe-type hinged floor-plate made up. I'll look carefully at the 37 Nosler when it comes out.

Back when the 26 Nosler was announced but brass wasn't available yet, I'd made a handful cases from 300 RUM brass , then the 28 Nosler was announced, I made a bunch of 28 Nosler cases from new Bertram 375 RUM brass for Ryan Pierce and a couple other guys locally,

fairly simple process but not what you would call "pushing" the shoulder down, which has limitations on how far you can "push" the shoulder before case collapse ... my process is simply forming a new shoulder location on the body of the brass, zero case collapses and brass squirts up and grows in length and trimmed, but does require case forming dies and bushings in .010" increments to keep brass flow even in thickness and to prevent premature stresses & fracturing, basically a gradual uniform size down without creating case shoulder and neck thickness variations

pics coming up

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**** note that this was done before anyone knew that Nosler would shorten the 30 & 33 case length from the origial 26 Nosler case oal, these are based on the original 26 & 28 Nosler length

Thanks for the pictures.